Spotlight on Diversity Marketsmith founder #8212 ‘I live diversity’

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When Monica Smith created Marketsmith Inc. in 1999, she wasn’t looking for anything other than the greatest talent.

“When I started out as a woman-owned business, I don’t know that I actively said, ‘Our company will be diverse.’ ”

But that’s exactly what was happening right in front of her, even if Smith overlooked it because of her personal experiences.

“I live diversity; I adopted five African-American children and I’m married to a woman,” Smith said.

“I know we skew older; I know we skew female; and we are quite ethnically diverse. … But I didn’t look at people for those reasons. I wanted people with heart.”

For example, Marketsmith Inc. — a marketing firm in Parsippany — has been known to hire young Rutgers University students straight out of school and welcome older working mothers back to the office.

But the company is not only unusual due to the varied makeup of its 25 current employees — it owes its three-year growth rate of 1,138 percent to its unconventional approach to marketing.

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“Marketsmith Inc. is very modern in our approach in that we specialize in data science,” Smith said. “While some agencies lead with media or creative, we are highly accountable and fiscally oriented.”

Marketsmith Inc. currently specializes in multichannel digital strategies for well-known clients, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institution and Solstice.

And it focuses so much on the numbers that it guarantees to improve its clients’ return on investment by at least 25 percent.

“We guarantee continual improvement and revenue growth because we’re not only good at assessing risk, but also communicating what opportunities and risks lie ahead,” Smith said.